


All the World is Green

by jaythewriter



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Disabled Character, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Recovery from trauma, Song Inspired, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 13:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4061215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythewriter/pseuds/jaythewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim has a proposal for Jay. Literally, a proposal. But only so they can reap the financial benefits from it and they can all live a little easier.</p><p>At least that's what it starts out being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the World is Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Go0se](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/gifts).



> Wrote this for a friend who has a thing for wedding stories. It isn't as schmaltzy as it sounds but it was fun writing this and seeing Tim put himself through the wringer.
> 
> Believe it or not, trigger warnings apply: Jay is in a kind of trauma shock state throughout the story, resembling depression. There are mentions of blood and guns, and someone attempting to murder someone else.

It occurs to him first when the hospital bill appears in his lap.

Had Tim been in a laughing mood, he would have laughed the idea off. His thoughts can be weird, running away by themselves and playing imaginary games together, but they rarely sound this close to reality. When his brain rears its fists and maintains its own will, it often tells him to pull off impossible stunts. Like don a mask and go barreling into the woods to confront that fucking thing for giving him such a hard time since, oh, the moment he popped out of the womb.

His thoughts are normally more violent than romantic.

Sitting on his phone and looking at his bank account, though, figuring out how to sort his meager expenses so he could pay the bill in due time, he realizes: it’s not such an illogical thought to have.

Marriage would make bills, taxes, money in general, easier for him and Jay.

They aren’t going anywhere. There isn’t anybody left for them in this world to cling to besides the tiny group in Tim’s house now, consisting of a currently tied up Brian and a watchful Jessica in Tim’s bedroom. The way Jay’s life is going to be now, in and out of hospitals for the wound Alex left in him and dealing with the surgeries he might want… and lord knows what sort of shit Tim will get into.

Being there for each other is something they’re good at. Emotionally, mentally, not so much, but physically they are constantly around each other, right? That’s something required of married people, to be in one another’s presence constantly. They lean on each other to the point where Tim thinks he ought to bring it up with his therapist.

But this is Alabama.

Jay’s birth certificate might make the legal system /think/ their marriage is a sound one, but if they saw him in the flesh…

Not like he could ask Jay anyway. Asking him his feelings on any matter is akin to traversing into a minefield while attempting to pull one’s own teeth. He could pour out bombshells from his lips, tearing apart your heart, or he could lock up completely and raise those barbwire shoulders of his.

Asking Jay his opinion on this, this weird matter that’s stuck in Tim’s throat and cutting off his air, he doesn’t want to imagine the look he’ll receive. The mixture of rejection and discomfort. Why does it hurt worse, conjuring up the potential image of Jay’s disgust?

He peers up from behind the kitchen counter, where he sits on a stool too high for his feet to hit the ground. Jay lounges out across the couch, a hand over his torso, as still and pale as the hallucination that somehow painted it across the camera lens. All he needs is a sea of scribbled on papers surrounding him.

Being married to this broken man, when Tim has enough on his plate hefting around his own weighty shell full of worldly exhaustion and memories he cannot shake loose?

These weird thoughts are getting less and less useful to him. No logic to marrying Jay whatsoever.

None.

\--

“You’ll have to get him a ring.”

Brian proceeds to let out a shriek as he’s slapped upside the back of his head. He ducks away from Tim, cowering some when he lifts a finger to his lips.

“Shut up, he’s bedridden, not hard of hearing.”

“Sor-ry,” Brian drags the word out, rolling his eyes before sitting up straight. “But I stand by what I said. You can’t just go proposing something like that without a nice shiny rock to put on his finger.”

The weight of Brian’s words is too much. Tim puts his heavy head down on the kitchen counter, groaning and grinding his teeth. Running his fingers through his tousled hair, very much in need of a shower he’s not had the energy to take, he peeks up at his friend through his bangs.

“It’s not a romance thing. I’m not getting down on one knee to tell him I want to be his, I dunno, Disney prince forever and ever.”

“I think he’d like that, he keeps asking Jessica if she has any Disney movies and if she could help him download some onto the laptop you gave him.”

“Great, he’s putting it to good use, nice to know,” Tim gripes on and on. He sits up, elbows propped onto the counter, arms casting shadows over the pile of bills and rejection letters from once-potential employers. “I told you, though. I just think it would be better. It’s not like he’s going anywhere, if ever, and it’d be better financially. I don’t think he’ll be able to get a job anytime soon but until he does… I dunno. I wanna take care of him.”

“You’re not obligated to, but I guess that doesn’t mean anything to you,” Brian points out, not to deter him but as a reminder: he doesn’t owe anyone anything. Tim shakes his head, receiving a small smile in return. “Regardless, that’s pretty cool of you. I would’ve gone for Jessica, personally, but if it’s finances and stuff, I can see why.”

“Yeah, she has a job,” Tim says, calm, conveniently leaving out that he had thought of that and yet he cannot picture himself with anyone else on his arm besides Jay. On his arm in a figuratively speaking way, that is. “So I’m asking you if it’s something I should ask him or if I’m gonna get punched in the face.”

Brian turns his eyes to the ceiling in thought, tapping his cane against the carpet. Thud, thud, thud.

“…I don’t know too much about Jay except from the tapes that you made Jessica show me,” Brian admits after a quiet moment. He pulls his cane into his lap, leaning forward on his stool to speak under his breath and make himself be heard. “I can’t remember anything from when we worked on Marble Hornets together. But I think he cares about you and would be willing to listen to any ideas you have.”

Tim nods. He knew this. Logically, he’s sure that Jay will at least give the idea some consideration. There isn’t any downside to it, except maybe some awkwardness that would ensue from society’s view on marriage. It’s not as though Tim expects him to go through with the things other married people do.

(It’s easy to imagine it, though, Jay rolling over in bed to hide in his chest, peppering his face with good morning kisses. Chapped lips brushing his cheeks, heating them back to life.)

(They shared beds before. It was cheaper. Warmer on the long nights where even Alabama could not escape the clutches of winter.)

He shakes it off.

“I don’t think it’d be fair to share it with him when he’s got other stuff on his mind, though,” Brian points out, making to climb off of his stool, leaning on both the cane and counter for support.

“Yeah, like Ariel and Bambi apparently,” Tim grouses, just before he earns a gentle tap to the head from the cane he bought Brian himself. “Hey, it’s a work laptop, I’d like it to be used for more productive things.”

“It’s like I said though, Tim,” Brian says around a sad smile, pulling the cane back and pressing his whole weight on it. “He’s gonna have a ton of other things on his mind right now.”

\--

Tim is good at keeping promises if nothing else, so when Jessica has him (forces him, twists his arm) to promise to sit down and talk with her once Brian and Jay were asleep, he does. Takes them a while, waiting on Brian’s painkillers to take effect and for Jay to close the laptop down after fucking around on YouTube all day, but by three AM, Tim does indeed show up in the living room. Waiting for him is a sagging Jessica, her limbs pushed forward, knees out, elbows on them.

Jessica places her head in her hands, sleepless hollows stamped into her sharp face.

“You can’t avoid talking to him forever, Tim. It’s not fair to offload me onto him especially when I don’t have any goddamn answers.”

Ah, avoiding, that’s what Tim’s doing. Avoiding Jay. More accurately, avoiding his questions. Like what happened to Alex. Why he isn’t dead. Where did the Hooded Person get off to. How is it Jessica is still alive.

Lots of pressing questions that he either does not have the answer for, or it’s going to be akin to feeding coal to a blazing house fire when he gives Jay what he wants.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’ve been working.”

It’s not a total lie. In fact, it’s not a lie at all. Out of all four of them, Tim is the only one working, accepted back by his old employer to lift boxes and stock merchandise onto the grocery store shelves at absurd times of day. There isn’t nearly enough money in it, but Jessica handles the bills right now, pushing cash into Tim’s wallet when he isn’t looking.

Alright, perhaps it isn’t accurate to say he’s the only one working.

Regardless of his admittedly burning curiosity, he doesn’t ask where the dollar bills comes from. He just buys her the best bedsheets and food he can find.

(When Jay finally goes to sleep, after binging on Disney and cat videos and never laughing or smiling once, she vanishes out the door, a jacket pulled over her thin form. Tim caught her, once, and thought of chasing after her. This isn’t a safe place to be wandering while the moon is pinned up in the sky.)

(He held back on instinct. She returned, passing by his not-quite-sleeping form on the couch, jacket not as bulky as it was.)

“Yeah, but you owe him a good talk, and then some,” Jessica insists before sitting up. Tim winces upon hearing her bones crack, up and down her body. Every joint is pissed off with its owner. “Like, he keeps asking if I know where Alex is, and how I made it out alive. I don’t know. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

“And I /told/ you, everything I remember is on the tape that Jay stole from me and posted online,” Tim reminds her. “If this is you trying to go the two-birds one-stone route with me it’s not gonna work. There’s nothing else to pick out of my brain.”

“Whatever, then,” she huffs, couch whining when she shifts to face the windows behind them. She parts the shades with her fingertips, peeking out into the black night. Nothing worthy of mention is found, seeing as she sits back down, no comment. Still, Tim knows that feeling, the constant barrage of ‘check check check lock lock lock hide hide hide’. “My point is, you need to go talk to Jay and maybe stop pushing the caretaker roll onto me.”

Tim squirms, itches at his arms. He can’t bring himself to look Jessica in the eye lest she see the guilt there.

“I didn’t know he was going to be this chatty. But I’m sorry. I didn’t think Brian would be able to handle him since he can hardly walk and I knew seeing you might at least brighten him up.”

“Well, as you’ve seen, he’s bright as a busted lightbulb.”

(He’s grayer and grayer, skin tighter on his bones, eyes lost in a place that very well might not exist. Tim peeks in on him every hour when he’s home, and sees nothing has changed. The laptop screams and blinks and flashes at him, but he sits as a stark contrast, broken and sinking into this crater he has carved out for himself.)

(Jessica told him by week two that he was able to sit up and swing his legs over the side, so he isn’t exactly bedridden anymore.)

“He’s… not giving you a hard time, is he?”

Jessica shakes her head, bob-cut hair swaying around her ears.

“No, not at all. It’s honestly just getting to me how /little/ of a time he’s giving me. He sits there all day. You’ve seen him. It hurts to be a part of it and know I can’t do anything.”

“I can’t do much,” Tim points out again, but he understands now.

There isn’t any excuse now. Not even work. He isn’t out all day, every day. Jay’s bedroom sits next door to his, and he could visit, drop in at any time.

Last time Tim stood alone with Jay, spoke to him one on one without anyone else to interrupt, they were in a hospital room.

It’s been weeks.

Tim is on his feet before Jessica can speak further, not to escape but to do what she’s asking of him. He feels her eyes following him, though she does not go after him.

“He might be actually asleep,” she calls out to his back.

No he isn’t. They both know it, since she is not moving to stop him. He likely drifted off for a few moments, and now he’s up again, listening in like he tends to, in his oh so Jay-like manner.

Tim can’t blame him. Eavesdropping, peeking, and sneaking are his basest instincts now, his means to survival. That stacked on top of a myriad of stomach pains and coughing that refuses to go away, he’s never really asleep.

It’s a wonder that he hasn’t disintegrated into a pile of dust and blood on the bed, taken down by the exhaustion that runs in his bones.

The bedroom Tim shacked him up in is small, but not meant to be this confining-- the window is shut tight, curtains drawn, and any personal touches Jay might have brought to the room are absent. The sole sign of life here comes from the shivering lump on the bed. The laptop sits open next to it, screen glowing such an obscenely bright white it could be giving the sun a run for its money.

“So how much of that did you hear?” Tim asks, not expecting an answer.

Jay rolls over, the bed creaking under him despite there being little weight on top of it to complain about. Blue eyes peer out from the hollows that have taken up residence on Jay’s face. There could be a pair of eyes looking up at Tim from a crater in the earth and there wouldn’t be much of a difference.

“…I didn’t mean to make her feel like I was harassing her.”

The croaking voice that emerges from the depths of the thick blankets is rough on the ears and heart. Tim rubs at his arm, looks away. Something inside him burns.

“You’re curious and you have a right to answers. She just didn’t have those answers,” Tim assures him, mentally reminding himself to make Jay apologize when he’s more lucid. He takes several slow steps toward the bed, hovering beside it a moment before dropping down to sit. Jay doesn’t so much as twitch. “I don’t know all the answers, Jay.”

“I know,” he mutters, a shuddering sigh shaking his shoulders. He lifts himself up, leaning his head against the headboard and bunching the blankets in his hands. Jay would look more at home in a hospital. “Alex… he’s not here anymore, is he?”

Tim shakes his head. He tries not to be too glad that Jay decides not to press the issue of how or why he isn’t around.

“He did this to me.”

Tim nods this time. Yes. The bandages around his torso, the stitches, the blood that sometimes seeps up his throat to stain the pillows red and paint his lungs the same color.

“I found you just after he shot you. We were in the same building, and when you ran into that room, I heard the door slam shut so I came down and…”

(The gun topples to the floor, cracking loud against the surface. Shocks of electricity run up your spine; it’sgoingtogooffsomeone’sgoingtodie-- but that’s only in movies.)

(Alex lays helpless beside it, clutching at your wrists. Your thumbs on his throat lay on the pressure. He opens his mouth, hisses at you, tells you to go die.)

(Your weight on top of him keeps him in place. He chokes, cries out a name. You don’t recognize it, it comes of another language, one that cannot be of this Earth, and you realize.)

(You’ve just heard the monster’s name spoken aloud.)

(Whether he was summoning it for help or warning you, you don’t bother to find out. A sharp right hook, and he’s out cold.)

(Jay sits in the room he chose as his place of safety, wheezing and pleading to something, anything that will listen and save him. You end up being that anything, crouching beside him and scooping him easily into your arms. He’s lighter than air, however impossible that might be. The bullet took the wind, the weight, the humanity out of him.)

(Holding his life in your hands did something to you. You don’t know what. But it remains, festering, or perhaps, blooming in you, laying out that thought, that idea, planting it until it’s wrapped around your heart.)

(When you run down that hallway, run harder than you ever have in your short life, you pass by Alex.)

(The world flickers, daring to flee from you, but you’re out the door before it can flip out from beneath your feet. Alex is screaming from inside the building, not for you two to return to him, but in pain.)

(He was being punished.)

“I found you. We got out of there and you were hospitalized. They said it’s gonna be a while before you’re okay to really handle real life again.”

Jay sits still. Maybe it’s a trick of light but Tim doesn’t even see him breathe. His back against the headboard, it’s incredibly simple to replace it with the crumbling wall Jay propped himself on, clutching his bloody stomach, dry heaving and staring at him, big eyes, pleading, wondering, why this, what did he do--

Tim coughs, rubbing a line of static and exhaustion from his eyes.

“Was there anything else you had in mind?”

Breaking the stillness, Jay blinks slowly, eyelashes batting. He shrugs, arms breaching from the blankets so he can clasp his hands together.

“…Brian said you have something to tell me.”

Something in Tim snaps taut. His spine follows suit.

“What?”

“He said you--”

“No, I don’t,” Tim cuts him off, maybe too fast, but he refuses to entertain those words. Right now he’s plotting how best to stomp into Brian’s room and demand why he felt the need to let Jay know there was something brewing underfoot. His heart squirms in his throat, failing to trickle back into place when he swallows thickly. “You must have heard him wrong. Listen, I need to go--”

“Don’t keep things from me again, Tim.”

He freezes before he can escape past the threshold.

Brian’s words, but, not Brian’s words, they stick into his back, a colony of arrows shooting into him from a distance that he cannot see. Liar, liar, liar, the hooded one was not wrong but the hooded one never claimed he would lie about such a /ridiculous/ matter. This is marriage, it’s not important, it was a passing thought and now Brian had to go and leave him vulnerable, like, he probably thought he was helping by leaving this gateway open and shoving Tim toward it but it’s got him shaking now.

“I don’t have anything else to tell you,” Tim manages, before he pushes himself out of the room. He slips next door, locking his bedroom up behind him despite Jay being trapped against his mattress for god knows how long.

Jay’s voice followed him out. He pretended not to hear a word, but the words stick into him now, one more arrow hanging out of his exposed back.

‘I don’t believe you.’

\--

He has Brian do it.

It’s not right, he knows that. Those words run in circles in his brain while he paces, back and forth, down the hallway and to the kitchen. It was that or do it himself, like a proper responsible person would.

But then he looks at the him from two nights ago, running out on Jay, nearly erupting into a breakdown the moment he locked himself away.

These walls are built thick. Pressing his ear against them yields him no chunk of conversation, save for a faint murmur that could be Brian’s voice. The door would be a better option but whenever he thinks of doing it, he imagines his luck will continue to be total shit. It will swing open just as he’s settling in and he’ll flop face first onto the ground, sneaky intentions laid out for Jay to see.

Funny, because Jay wouldn’t think twice about doing it, and he wouldn’t truly feel shame for it. He would put on an embarrassed show, promising never to do it again, fingers crossed behind his back. Why does Tim want to marry such an unapologetically sneaky person?

(It would be better. Easier. Another bond between them, to hold them together, one that they would both value. Finances. Home. Togetherness.)

(Togetherness, togetherness, togetherness.)

His insides ache. Is that anxiety or is he ill from his own stupidity finally getting to him?

He wishes Jessica had come to do it instead. It wouldn’t be fair, though, after how he treated her by shoving her onto Jay and his graveyard of problems. That’s why he didn’t press the matter when she said no-- “I think I’ve found Amy anyway,” she continued, excusing herself entirely. “She’s working at the library right now and by the looks of it, she isn’t doing well. I’m not letting her deal with this alone.”

Tim just about claws out from beneath his skin and crawls away when he hears his bedroom door click open. Brian peeks out from the inside, raising his eyebrows at Tim where he stands frozen in the middle of the hallway.

“He wants to talk to you,” Brian announces, no hint of what went on inside riding upon his voice. “Alone.”

Brian steps out of the room, bowing Tim inside and, unlike Tim, making an attempt to be polite by walking away and out the house. The whole building shudders when he shuts the door behind him.

Jay sits up in bed, shoulders to the headboard, feet wagging under the blankets. It’s the most movement Tim has seen from him in weeks that didn’t involve a keyboard being beneath his rapidly tapping fingers. Hell, this is the closest to /alive/ Jay has looked, eyes alert and glittering in the golden light thrown off by the bedside lamp.

(Some part of Tim flutters in thinking that he’s the cause. He did that.)

“So is what Brian said true?”

Tim nods-- and before he can stop himself he’s talking a million miles per hour. A switch has been flipped and his mouth is running now, no more locks and thrown away keys. Of course it’s true, it’s been on his mind for a while now, of course, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it because it seemed so /right/, it seemed like the best thing to do and don’t you agree, Jay? It’s what I didn’t want to talk about before. And now it’s stuck there because I like the idea of it, like, too much, so much, I hope it’s okay, I really hope all of this is okay, and…

Brown eyes catch onto gleaming blue ones.

Tim’s face is hot. He shuts down and shoves his hands in his jeans’ pockets.

“You, of all people.”

Thin elegant fingers pick and pull at the sheets, running errant and loosening the stray threads. Those are not nervous hands. Not that Tim knows what they actually are, though. Could be angry hands, plotting hands, wondering how best to get back at him.

But his calm, warm smile, his flushed face, every bright pink color caught and shown off in high definition from his pale, pale skin…

Social cues are impossible, Tim hates every one of them, but he thinks they’re on his side this time.

“I’m flattered,” Jay says, taking a breath, and in that breath, that single second, Tim crashes back down. His insides swim and writhe, something constricting wriggling along out of nowhere to tie itself around him and cut off the blood to his head, the breath to his chest.

Flattered means, nice, that’s so very nice of him, but no, no thank you. How could he have thought it was reasonable to expect this of Jay? /Did/ he expect him to say yes, like he owed it to him? Is Tim that terrible a guy, that he would feel that way? No, that isn’t it, no, this is rejection. There’s the rejection he’s felt in the past, slamming into him as the fists of his peers would when he calls them out for being assholes. He could never be their friend-- but that was tolerable, he was used to it by the millionth incident of aching knuckles.

This is beyond that. Beyond him.

“Maybe flattered isn’t the right word… surprised? Pleasantly, I guess. Brian said it wasn’t a, uh, love thing but still, it’s a pretty big commitment and a big offer. Does that make sense?”

Jay’s voice is far off. He could be underwater and he’d sound the same. Tim blinks the fog from his eyes and nods, hoping he heard Jay right. The color in Jay’s face remains, filling him in, bringing more and more life to his tight cheekbones.

“But I’m gonna have to say no-- for now,” Jay says much faster than need be. Maybe he senses the distress that bubbles below the surface. Regardless, Tim might keel over from the blood rush and, exactly, how long had he been holding his breath?

“For now?” he questions weakly.

“For now,” Jay repeats. His smile is small but warm, and he reaches out to Tim, both hands. Their fingers entwine together, fitting perfectly. “I don’t know if I can say yes when I’m this doped up and when there’s so much going on. Plus… I need to hear you say it.”

“It?” Tim croaks out. He’s fixated on Jay’s soft knuckles.

“That you want to marry me. You can’t send Brian.”

Tim opens his mouth and says it. Or, he imagines himself saying it, and what comes out is a terrified squeak. Whatever Jay might say, however accepting he may be, Tim can’t do it.

Not yet.

“…Maybe you have a point.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re ready yet,” Jay gently squeezes his hands as he speaks. He peers up into Tim’s face, sees into him. There’s no hiding when Jay is involved, and, maybe, that’s for the best. “We can try this again, later. And if anything’s changed by then, I want to know. Okay?”

(He knows. Or maybe Brian knows, and told him. One or the other, Tim is certain of one thing: Jay’s finger, on his thudding pulse? Not a coincidence.)

When Tim walks out of the room a moment later, he hears Jay playing more Disney. It’s a song he cannot recognize but he knows he has heard of it.

_So this is love, so this, is love_

Tim thinks of shining jewels, of gleaming golden bands, things that are out of his reach.

Unless he started saving.

And now, he has to wonder if Brian is right, and that he ought to go searching for something to put on Jay’s finger.


End file.
